UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — At 3:43 of the second period in a game against Army West Point on January 1, Dylan Lugris, who had never played a game for Penn State before, went bar-down to give the Nittany Lions the 3-1 lead.
In the stands of Tate Rink, his parents were crying. Lugris said he blacked out when he scored the goal, and at first didn't even realize it had gone in. But a month and a half before he scored his first goal in his first game as a Nittany Lion, Lugris had no idea he would be playing for Penn State come the New Year.
"My coach called me in the morning and was like 'Hey, Penn State asked for your transcripts,' and I was like, 'Oh cool, that's awesome.' Then it went away for a while, I didn't really hear much, and I think just over three weeks ago I got a call from my advisor… and he was like 'Penn State's going to be calling you today,'" Lugris said.
Lugris went about his day and got ready for practice as the captain of the Jersey Hitmen of the National Collegiate Development Conference. After practice he got off the ice and checked his phone, only to see he had missed a call from a number in State College.
"So I went in the lobby, called the number back and they told me everything – 'come in at Christmas,' and I think I said yes before they evened finished the sentence," Lugris said.
Right after he got off the phone with the team, he called his biggest supporter to tell him the good news.
"I called my dad and he didn't believe me at first. He asked me, 'Are you serious, are you serious,' probably four times," Lugris said. "It was crazy, and then I called my mom after, and it was just an unbelievable couple hours."
Four days after the phone call, Lugris had filled out every form he needed in order to come to Penn State. But, even though he was three and a half hours away from Hockey Valley in Wayne, N.J., Lugris already felt like he was a part of the team.
"A couple hours after I made the decision, I was added to the team group text and they immediately started giving me advice, and my roommate reached out pretty quickly and we started talking… so that was good," Lugris said. "Coach Guy gave me time… I think it was like two days after, we hopped on a Zoom and talked about the culture, rules and stuff like that and I felt like I'd been (at Penn State) a lot longer than a couple days."
Lugris is only the second player in Penn State men's hockey history to join the team during the middle of the season. Brett Murray was the first, and everyone on the team is aware of how incredibly difficult it is to make the jump to college hockey halfway through the year.
"Every shift he gets in the Big Ten is like a big-time steep learning curve. Big time and extremely valuable. He's going to be a lot better in a couple weeks than he was this weekend. It's the way it works, and it's the way it worked with all freshmen," head coach Guy Gadowsky said. "But, they had training camp, they had non-conference games… Lugris is in a really unique position. He's handling it extremely well, but don't by any stretch of the imagination think it's easy to do what he's doing."
Three games into his Penn State hockey career, Lugris is still trying to wrap his head around being a Nittany Lion.
"When I stepped on the ice for warmups against Notre Dame on Friday it was just unbelievable… I was watching everybody in the stands, there were kids waving, asking for pucks, it was just such a surreal feeling… I don't know where else you would want to play college hockey — this is the best rink ever, the best fans, it doesn't get any better," Lugris said.
The biggest difference between junior hockey and specifically Big Ten hockey is the pace of the game, according to Lugris. Everything is faster, and playing at the pace of the game is one area he intends to work on in the coming months.
While jumping into Big Ten hockey isn't easy, getting into the swing of being a college freshman is a whole other challenge, especially midway through the year. While he took some college classes before coming to Penn State, the New York native hasn't taken in-person classes in about two years.
"It was definitely overwhelming at first, but I got a lot of great help from the coaching staff and the players, and they kind of made the transition pretty easy on me and made me feel at home right away," Lugris said.
To his new teammates, Lugris is fitting into the program seamlessly.
"He's an awesome kid," Jimmy Dowd Jr. said. "He's fun to be around, he works hard – he does extra. He's a really high character kid. It's always fun when you get a new teammate… I think in these first couple weeks he's been trending up and I believe he's going to continue trending up throughout the semester."
